


The Marriage

by bismoran



Series: The Marriage Verse [2]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Antisemitism, Anxiety, Arson, Child Marriage, Fire, Holocaust, Immigration & Emigration, Implied Murder, Implied Sexual Content, Kid Fic, Multi, Period-Typical Racism, Polyamory, Power Imbalance, Teen Pregnancy, antiziganism, attempted child murder, maybe? - Freeform, mostly - Freeform, mutant husbands and their human wife
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 17:13:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1274518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bismoran/pseuds/bismoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fire that killed Anya in comics didn't kill her in this universe. She, her father, and her mother all managed to escape it and gain refugee status. As they slowly start to settle into their life in America, a man from the resettlement agency, Charles Xavier, comes into their lives.</p><p>This fic combines both XMFC and comics universes, bits and pieces from both, and will tend to become kid fic slowly but surely. In this main fic, there will not be much in the way of graphic sex, but other fics in the same universe might. </p><p>If you are reading for Wanda, Pietro, or Lorna, they have not appeared yet, but they will at some point. Enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Marriage

Magda's hands stayed on her knitting for most of the nearly day long flight, deft fingers moving stitches from one needle to another, forming the lace baby blanket. The ball of white lace weight yarn sat in the chair next to Anya who laid sleeping against the window.

But her eyes stayed on her husband. His ice blue eyes seemed to capture her eyes and her attention. 

“Is something troubling you, my treasure?” he asked her softly, in German, looking at her from across the row separating them. She still found it so odd that a language that had been used to hurt and harm both of them could also be kind, and soft, and make her feel like she was, indeed, a treasure.

“N-no,” she said. She gave him a smile. “I'm just nervous, darling...What if we arrive there and we're sent away? I know you have the papers in order, but,” she cleared her throat a little, frowning. “You and I don't have the best of luck, do we?”

Erik gave her a sad smile, and reached across the aisle, placing a hand on her hand. “I'd say we do. Anya is alive. You are alive. I am alive. And in twelve hours, we will be in New York.”

“I'm not certain a change in location will mean a change in our luck.”

Erik looked at her, dead in the eye, this time serious-faced. “I promise. We are lucky. If we weren't, we wouldn't be here.”

If Magda closed her eyes, she could still smell the smoke from the fire that nearly killed their daughter on her clothes, her hair, her skin. Like she had absorbed it. Like it was inside her, in her blood stream. She'd absorbed that smoke, along with fear.

It'd been terrifying. The flames shot out of their little house from all sides like snakes made of fire. The smoke made it hard to see, and neighbors were gathered outside, watching and staring, but no one doing a single thing. 

Magda had gotten out first, with just the clothes on her back. She ran from the house, to get clear of the smoke, to watch for Erik, and Anya. Her boots wobbled in the snow as she ran, not completely balanced with each step she took.

Erik told her later, when they made it to Kiev, that she'd been shouting and wailing and crying outside the house, and that was how he knew she was alive as he ran outside, carrying Anya over his shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes. 

She had a burn by her elbow, about the size of a grape, and she'd breathed in a lot of smoke. But otherwise their Anya had been fine. Erik gave Magda all the money that had survived the fire, and told her to get to Kiev and find Anya a doctor.

And she went.

A week later, Erik showed up. His eyes were a little mad looking, wild and full of fear, in a way Magda hadn't seen them in years, but he picked up their little An'yka and smiled and spun her around, and gave her, and her mama, a big kiss, and told her they weren't going to return to Ukraine. He told her he'd been to the American Embassy and they were approved for refugee status. 

Magda was fairly certain that wasn't the way it worked usually, but Erik was good at getting what he wanted or needed for his family. Magda still wasn't sure how he managed, but every time it worked out in their favor, it made her smile.

–  
New York was as beautiful as Anya had imagined. It was huge, and sunny, and warm. There were very few trees, but there was a subway train, on a high, elevated track near the window of her apartment. Every fifteen minutes, if not less, a train would pass by, click click clicking down the tracks. It was very loud and made the house shake, but during the day, Mama would just turn on a record on the cheap second hand record player she bought their third night in America, at the highest volume and she and Anya would dance to it. Or, if she was too busy cleaning or baking or knitting or sewing, Anya would dance.

It blocked out the sound of the train mostly, the records did. 

The way Anya's stockings skated along the wooden floor as she twirled and approximated pirouettes and jetés made her feel like a real dancer. Even if she was doing something else, Mama would watch her out of the corner of her eye and smile at her. 

“Wonderful,” she'd say, clapping her hands together as a song ended and Anya would sit down for a few moments for a break. “You're so graceful Miss An’yka.” 

Anya would stick her tongue out at her mama then close her mouth and smile at Magda.

During the day, when Erik was out, looking for work, the two spoke a lot. They'd speak in whatever language Anya picked out to speak that day. Usually Romani or Polish, but sometimes German, Russian, or even English.

They didn't leave the house much. Or at least Magda didn't. Anya was pretty sure going outside made her mama nervous. She didn't know why though. The kids in the neighborhood were nice. 

Donna and Joe from next door and her would often go outside and jump rope or play hopscotch in front of the store beneath their apartment. But Mama would stay upstairs, sitting by the window with her knitting, and she'd sit there, looking down, knitting and watching them.  
–

He could do many things with his hands, Erik could. His father, after the first war, had been an electrician and a plumber, and before the camps Erik helped him with both. He could do much with his mind as well.

“What do you want to do for a living, Erik?” the woman, a short, petite blonde woman with a very round, distinctly Norman face, asked him. She had fine, delicate features, the kind aristocrats had. She didn't call him Mr Lehnsherr. She called him Erik. As though they were close friends. But they weren't friends. 

She was the woman the resettlement agency had sent. Erik could tell from the clothes she wore, well tailored, well fitting, the height of fashion, the fur stole she'd hung on the clothes rack, and the way she clasp her handbag just a little too tightly in their house that she was a woman of means. Probably doing charity work to feel like she had done something of value. A wealthy socialite who cared very little about their plight, who only wished to impress her friends. 

“It's not a matter of what I wish to do, Mrs Xavier.” Erik said, speaking slowly, enunciating every word, every letter. English made him self-conscious, but the woman spoke no German, nor Russian, nor any of the other languages he spoke regularly, and his French, the only other language he thought they might share, was quite rusty. 

“What is it a matter of?” She rested her hand on her chin and looked at him with those big blue eyes of her's. They were the color of a sky just before it rained, blue-grey-white. 

“It is a matter of what someone would hire me to do. My education only goes up to your grade four, so I doubt I could become a university professor, or a secretary. And I am a Jew.”

“Your faith doesn't matter in America. America is the land of opportunity,” she said with a smile. “It doesn't matter who or what you are. You could be a ten foot tall monster, and as long as you're willing to work hard, someone will hire you!”

Erik gave a cold, hollow laugh.

“Well, you're never going to get hired with that attitude.”

Magda walked into the living room, carrying a tea-set she'd bought second hand from their neighbor, a German woman with a short swarthy husband and two kids a little younger than Anya. She poured Mrs Xavier a mugful, then one for Erik, and one for herself. 

“Your tea,” she said, looking at Mrs Xavier, “Cream? Sugar?” Her English wasn't as good as Erik's. She'd learned from him, and he had been self-taught, learning from the cinema and BBC broadcasts his radio had gotten as a child. So sometimes she struggled. Which is why she stuck to talking to the German woman.

“Just a little sugar, darling,” Mrs Xavier said with a smile. “I can fix it myself.”

Magda gave a small nod, picked up the two other mugs of tea, handed one to Erik, then and pulled over a chair to sit next to him. 

“What has she been asking you?” Magda asked him softly, in German.

“She's asked me what I want to do for a living. When I told her it was a matter of what I was able to do more than what I wanted to do, she said I wasn't going to get employed with that attitude.”

Magda gave him a small, private laugh.

“What'd she say?” Mrs Xavier asked. One could see the anger in the micro-expressions in her face. How dare they speak a language she didn't understand in front of her.

“She was telling me that my daughter Anya and the neighbor girl wish to put on a play for the two of us later,” Erik lied. 

“Oh! Lovely!”

There was silence for a few moments, until Mrs Xavier clapped her hands together. “Well, then, what are your skills?”

“I have done electrical work before. Plumbing. I can read and write in English, German, Yiddish, Russian, and Polish. I can speak English, French, German, Yiddish, Russian, Polish, a dialect of Romani, Hungarian and a few other languages. I've also run a farm for two years. But I doubt quite highly that will be of any use in America, or, at least, in New York.”

“Quite. Have you considered becoming an electrician or a plumber then?” 

“I would need an apprenticeship to be union certified, Mrs. Xavier. And I can't easily find one.”

“Oh. Of course.” She took a sip of her tea and tried to hide the pinking of her cheeks. She set her tea down on the table next to her, and glanced down at her wrist watch. “Is it really four already? I must be getting home. It will be a very long trip if I don't leave now.” 

She excused herself without saying goodbye, and left.

“She didn't finish her tea,” Magda said with a frown, still speaking German. “That's a waste.”

Erik nodded. “She won't be very helpful.”

“I should think not. Dolores' husband works for driving bus. Perhaps I could talk to him about getting you a job there.”

“Is she the German woman next door?” 

“Yes,” Magda said with a nod. “Anya and her daughter Donnalee get along.”

“Donnalee. What sort of a name is Donnalee?”

Magda gave him a wry smile. “An American one.”

That made Erik smile back at her. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I love you so much, my treasure.”

“I love you too, my darling.”  
–  
Being in the house all day made Magda stir crazy. But the idea of leaving the house made her feel panicked. 

She wasn't a coward. Something in her brain, she was certain, just miswired itself, after the fire, to make her afraid of going outside. She knew it was a foolish fear, but just thinking about taking Anya down to the market to pick up some potatoes for supper made her hands shake and her stomach twist in the most complicated of knots. 

It made her very lonely, the peeling green wallpaper of the kitchen and the sitting room the walls of her cage, and the borrowed German records, and the sound of the J train from outside the window her only companions.

Perhaps that was a bit dramatic, but her fear did make her feel imprisoned. Especially when her daughter, red curls bouncing behind her, and tails of her white dress flaring out as she ran, and her husband, each rejection from a job showing in his face as he left for another day of looking, were free to come and go as they pleased.

Today, she sat at the kitchen table, making bread. The kneading of the bread dough, the way she punched it down after it rose on the windowsill in the bedroom made her feel at peace. The recipe had been that of a neighbor in Russia. A kindly woman, Madame Petrov had given her the recipe when she was fifteen, and her and Erik had just escaped the camps and she could barely cook a thing for her new husband. 

Madame Petrov had been their when her house was burning. She had watched it burn. And she did nothing. 

Magda punched the dough against the table a few times, until it started to stick. She paused, spread some flour over the wobbly wood table, and kept kneading and punching and pulling and twisting. 

There was a knock on the door a few moments later, that made Magda jump. She placed the dough back into the pan and dusted her hands off on her grey dress, walking over to the door. 

She stared through the peephole. Standing outside was a man with dark hair, wearing a well-made, expensive looking suit. He had the bluest eyes Magda had ever seen. 

She slid the chain out of the lock, then unlocked the deadbolt and the knob. Usually she didn't open the door for strangers, but this man seemed different.

The man smiled at her as she pulled the door open. “Hello Mrs Lehnsherr, I'm Charles Xavier. I believe you met my mother, Augusta?” He extended a hand. Magda didn't take it.

“The woman from the...” Magda struggled to find the word she was looking for. 

“I speak German, if that's easier for you,” the man, Mr Xavier said, switching over. He spoke German as though he had been taught by someone who spoke a Bavarian dialect of the language, but on some words one could hear his natural accent ebb in. 

“Thank you,” Magda said, switching to German as well. “Your mother was the woman from the resettlement organization.”

“She was. They wanted her to come today, to check up on you and your husband, and your lovely daughter, but she wasn't able to make it. So she sent me instead.” Xavier smiled and it lit up his young face like a spotlight. 

“Come in,” Magda greeted. “If you will give me a moment, I need to change clothes. I'm afraid I have flour all over this one, and I don't wish to look a mess.”

“I don't think you look a mess,” Charles said softly. He walked over to one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Magda kicked herself for not cleaning off the flour before getting the door. “I think you look like a woman I rudely interrupted in the middle of her bread making.”

That made Magda smile. 

“May I sit?” he asked, glancing up at her. 

“Of course, Mr Xavier.”

“You can call me Charles if you like.”

“Charles.”

“What's your name?”

To most people, Magda would have said 'My name is Mrs. Erik Lehnsherr, and that is all you need to know', but something about this man...Boy...She wasn't certain of his age, made her feel differently. “Magda.” 

“Beautiful name.”

“Thank you.” 

She walked the pan of dough into the kitchen and placed it in the oven. Then, she walked back into the sitting room with a wet rag and swept the flour into her hand and placed it in the trash, feeling self-conscious with Charles' eyes on her, watching every move she made. 

Once the table was clean, she sat down at the table across from Charles. 

“Why did they send you here today, Mr- err, Charles?” 

“To check in on you. See exactly how well you're settling in. You and your husband.”

“We are doing well, I suppose. Erik is still looking for work. He's a skilled worker, but it is difficult for him to prove that when the man he apprenticed under is dead.”

“What did he do before the war?”

“He was a boy before the war, but he told me he worked with his father as an electrician.”

“How old are you both?” 

“Erik is twenty-four. I am twenty-one.”

“And your daughter is...?”

“Nearly five.” 

Charles nodded. “I'm eighteen now, and I can't imagine having a child. And you had one for, what? At least three years at my age. Was it difficult to raise her?”

“Not at all. And even if it had been, there was nothing Erik and I could do.”

“Is German your first language?” Charles called after her, as she walked into the kitchen

“No. I spoke Romani and Polish before German.”

There was silence for a few minutes, until the teakettle hissed. Magda poured the hot water into the tea pot and pulled out a canister of tea. “Are loose leaves alright? Or would you prefer bags?”

“Loose leaves are wonderful. Thank you,” Charles said. It was odd, but Magda felt like she hadn't heard it with her ears. But she had. She must of. 

She poured some cream into the creamer and set it on the tray along with the sugar. She pulled out some teaspoons, and set them on the tray as well, and then carried it into the sitting room. 

She poured Charles a mug, staring into his big blue eyes as she fixed it. Then she poured herself a mug and took a sip. She felt a fluttering feeling in her stomach, but tried to ignore it. Xavier was very attractive. 'You have a husband,' the little voice in her head that said to her the things a mother would say, chided. 

“Have you or Mr Lehnsherr made any friends in America yet?” Charles asked. He added a little sugar to his tea. He had long, thin fingers, and pale hands with prominent veins. There were no callouses and his nails were neatly filed. They weren't the hand of a man who worked. 

“I'm surprised you ask about friends before a job.”

“Friendship is important. It feeds one's soul more than a job ever could.”

“I don't mean to be rude, Mr- Charles, but man who cares more about the soul's feeding than the body's has never experienced true hunger.” 

“Perhaps you're right.” Charles smiled. His teeth were white and straight and they made Magda suddenly self-conscious about her own. He placed a finger to his temple, like it was hurting him, and closed his eyes. After about a moment, he opened them and removed his fingers. “You and Erik have enough to eat, yes?”

Magda smiled a tight smile and nodded. Again, more butterflies. She didn't like to lie. “More tea?”  
–  
Erik's back ached. His hands ached. He could feel his muscles twitching beneath the skin of his legs, beneath the skin of his upper arms. And he almost certainly had a headache coming on. But the nearly eight dollars in his pocket made it worth it. He'd found work. Not a job, a job was more long-term, but work. Helping haul boxes from ships and put them into trucks. Not exactly a mentally skilled job, but one could not be ungrateful. 

He reached Queens around eight. 'Anya will be in bed already,' he thought to himself, pulling a package of Lucky Strikes out of his pocket, and banging the box against his hand three or four times. 

The sky was full of light tonight. There was a large moon overhead, and for the first time since he came to New York, he could actually see the stars. The city looked so different at night. The buildings like some kind of crouching beast, waiting to strike. 

The metal that surrounded him made him feel safer. Not safe. He hadn't felt safe in years, but safer. 

He lit the cigarette with a few flicks of his lighter, and then brought it to his mouth. He breathed in the tobacco, and smiled. When he was finished, he flicked the cigarette away and stomped on it to put it out completely.

When he walked upstairs to their apartment, Magda and a man, a man with big blue eyes, were sitting together at the kitchen table. 

“Hello, you must be Mr Lehnsherr,” the man said. He rose from his seat in a fluid motion, and walked over to Erik and extended his hand. Erik took it and shook it.

“And you are?” Erik asked. 

“Forgive me, how rude of me, I'm Charles Xavier. I believe you met my mother Augusta a few weeks ago?”

Erik nodded. “So, she decided she didn't wish to help us any longer, didn't want to play at being kind, so she sent you along instead?”

“Honestly, essentially yes,” Charles said with a nod. He walked back over to the table and sat down. Erik joined him. 

“One moment,” Magda said, excusing herself, “I'll go warm up dinner for the three of us.” 

“Did Anya eat already?” Erik asked.

'Yes. But Charles and I decided we'd wait for you to eat,” Magda said. She walked into the kitchen.

“You have a wonderful wife, Erik, if I may call you Erik,” Charles said softly.

“Magda is my blessing, my treasure, my jewel,” Erik said. The fondness in his voice was apparent. “And I suppose you may.”

“You are, of course, free to call me Charles.”

Erik nodded. 

“Do you intend to ask ignorant questions about my attempts to find work the way your mother did?” Erik asked.

Charles' large blue eyes became thoughtful for a moment, and his mouth shifted into something between a smile and a frown and he brought one arm across his torso, leaving the other at his side. After a moment, he spoke. “No, I don't believe I intend to. Few men are happy doing nothing with their lives. Most wish to do something, and even if they don't, they wish for the money something like that would bring to them. And you seem the type of man who needs to be busy, needs to be doing something, anything, so if you're struggling to find a job, it almost certainly isn't your fault, it's that there are few to no jobs to find easily. I'm more worried about you and your wife settling in. Making friends. Finding spiritual support. The things my mother wouldn't care about, but which make the lives of many people worth living. Things that ensure you aren't alone.”

Erik gave him a luke warm smile. “And what would you know about being alone?”

“I was the gifted child of a socialite mother. I know as much about being alone, and being lonely, as intimately as nearly anyone of my station could.” Even with Erik's comment, the smile remained plastered on Charles' face. Those big blue eyes, Erik was stuck on them. If Magda's eyes were shining emeralds, Charles' were sapphires.

There was silence for a few moments, but Erik spoke again. “On Sundays, I go to the park and I play chess, if one of the men who plays there is kind enough to allow me to use his pieces as we play.”

“You play chess?” Charles asked, that grin of his getting even wider.

Magda returned to the table, carrying three plates of steaming carrots, spatezel, and bread. She set one down in front of each of them. “Yes. Erik plays chess. He's very good at it. I've never seen him lose.”

“That's because I've never had someone who played well,” Erik told her softly.

“No, it's because you-” a train clattered by outside the window. It drowned out the rest of Magda's sentence, and elicited a childish whine from the bedroom once it had passed. “Pardon for that, no,” she repeated, “It's because you play well.”

Erik smiled and placed a hand over Magda's and looking at her face. She was still so young, but she had changed so much in the years since they made their escape. Her face was fuller, more healthy looking, and she absolutely glowed. His beautiful wife. His precious treasure.

“Thank you,” he said after a moment, still looking at her. 

“You're welcome.”

Once Charles left for the night, Erik locked the bedroom door, and the front door, drew the blinds and closed the curtains. He needed to touch Magda, if she'd permit him. They'd both needed this for days. Erik could see her want in the way she stared at him, and the way he stared back at her, but in an apartment this small, in the same bed as their daughter, it was impossible.

There was something of a dance that had to be completed, before they did anything. Magda almost paced, at night, walking in circles, or lines, or loops, until she was ready for bed. And Erik, on nights like this, would follow her, just behind her. He'd wrap his arms around her, drawing her close to his body,. And tonight, he did just that 

“Good evening, my beauty,” he whispered into her ear, pushing aside some of her auburn hair, letting his nails scrape on her neck, just a little. “You are perfect, you know that, yes?”

“No person is perfect,” Magda whispered back. She twisted her neck and planted some feather soft kisses along Erik's jaw that made his skin feel like it'd been electrified. “But if either one of us was closer, it would be you.”

Their lips pressed against each other, both of them touch starved. Magda ran her tongue over Erik's lips softly, as he ran his fingers up her sides. He could feel the way she shivered a little with that touch and it turned him on more than he knew it should. 

When the two of them finished for the night, they laid on the floor together, clothes in a messy pile all around them, bodies close, still kissing. 

“That man from earlier,” Magda said, “He was quite nice.”

“Very,” Erik agreed. “Unlike his mother. I kept getting suck on those eyes of his.”

“Me too,” Magda agreed. “That boy will make someone very lucky, eyes like that, that personality.”

“Like you've made me lucky?”

“More like you've made me, my darling.”


End file.
